In the past months
FrostyTech has racked up the Air Miles, traveling to Taipei Taiwan and Las Vegas
to attend some of the computer industries largest events. During that time walking
the trade show floor, thousands of photos of the newest and most cutting edge cooling
systems were taken. In the following pages you'll see every imaginable
shape, material, and size of cooling system. From Socket T heatsinks for
Intel's LGA775 Pentium 4 processor to entirely passive water cooling towers that resemble
high end design more than a silent, liquid cooling system.

Exploring millions of square
feet of exhibit floors always leads to an abundance of
information to sift through. For
this article, FrostyTech will focus on covering the most well known
heatsink manufacturers and most inventive heatsink designs. Suffice to say, there were more
than few companies producing the exact same type of heatsink...

More than one manufacturer has described the
heatsink industry and "cut-throat competitive," and after seeing dozens of
Chinese companies selling their manufacturing services it's easy to
understand why patents in this area are seldom given the respect they
deserve.

Companies exhibiting at Computex and CES make up the
bulk of what we have to show you, but rest assured FrostyTech's connections
within the industry mean we can include a few unexpected surprises too. Some of
these heatsinks are already available, while others have yet to surface!

Heatsink Terminology For Intel Processors

TDP - Requirements

Northwood FMB2 - 82W

Prescott FMB1 - 89W

Prescott FMB1.5 - 100W

Prescott FMB2 - 103W

Tejas FMB1 - 110W to 140W (cancelled)

Intel Socket Formfactors

Socket 370 - N/A

Socket 478 - (Northwood-FMB2, Prescott-FMB1, Prescott FMB1.5)

Socket 775 - (Prescott-FMB2, Tejas-FMB1)
(cancelled)

AMD Socket Formfactors

Socket 462/A

Socket 754

Socket 940/939

Before we start off, a quick briefing on
the technical heatsink designations from Intel is in order. These code-names are
not what most of us would call a heatsink by, but if you're following heatsink
trends you'll need to be familiar with Intel's 'FMB' designations and
what currently, the majority of computers are using a Northwood
FMB2 heatsink which is capable of handling 82W. That will soon change as the
Prescott FMB1 guidelines come into effect, bringing along power dissipation requirements of 89W. Before we say goodbye to the
venerable socket 478 platform completely, the Prescott FMB1.5 guidelines will kick in with power dissipation requirements
of 103W.

With the change from socket m478 to socket LGA775
processors, Intel was to shift gears to the Prescott FMB2 and Tejas FMB1 standards. Prescott
FMB2 covers a power dissipation level of about 100W, and supports the LGA775 Prescott
processors. The Tejas FMB1 standard was to follow with a power dissipation level of 110W, but
Intel abruptly cancelled all Tejas core LGA775 processors because TDP values approached 150W in some
situations.

While the Tejas core is long dead and buried, heatsink manufacturers had enough time
to design and build heatsinks that would have otherwise supported a standard that was anticipated to
scale as high as 140W, before the cancellation was made public. Currently, the stock heatsink shipping
with socket 775 processors is Intel's Radial Curved Bifurcated Fin Heatsink
Reference Design.For for short, we'll just
called it by the model name; the Intel RCBFH-3 Reference Design. Incidently, the
word bifurcated means "forked or divided into two parts or
branches."